Talking about adoption, birthparents, abandonment, race, and China with my kids. That's not all we talk about -- but reading this blog, you'll think it's all we do!!!!!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

First Tweets

I was playing around on my laptop while the girls watched a video, and during a slow part they gathered around to see what I was doing. I was on Twitter, and tried to explain what it was, and that "tweets" were limited to 140 characters. I explained that I was posting tweets with #adoption, and was talking about some of the hard parts of adoption.

Not surprisingly, the girls wanted to tweet, too! And, boy, did they take seriously the idea of tweeting the hard parts of adoption:

Maya, age 6, says, "#adoption is hard because I have bad dreams and I can't stop them. Do you have bad dreams? I was adopted from China."

Zoe, age 9, says, "#adoption is hard because I want to find out about my birth parents in China.. When I grow up I'm going to find them."

Zoe's tweet didn't surprise me overmuch, but she was quite a bit more positive than usual that she could actually find her birth parents.

Maya has been having bad dreams lately, but she's never connected them to being adopted before. Mostly the dreams have been about monsters, without many specifics. Definitely something to talk more about.

The Twitter folks who follow #adoption tend to be a bit on the rainbows-and-unicorns side, so I wonder what they'll make of these 140-character windows into the other side from a child's perspective. . . .

On the issue of bad dreams. . . I think there is usually a reason. It may have something to do with adoption and maybe not. My daughter was having bad dreams a few weeks ago, and I couldn't figure out why. Then I remembered a comment she made during bath time a couple nights ago. She said she was afraid to go to Asia (we are planning a trip there in 2011). We talked about why. I think it has something to do with the fact that she came from there, and maybe isn't sure what kind of expectations we have of her on this trip. I jokingly told her a few weeks ago that since she is learning Chinese, we hoped she would be able to translate for us when we're in China. I thought she knew I was kidding, but I think she really took that to heart and was having anxiety about it. That same night she wanted to start making a list of what to pack for the trip still 1 and a half years away! After a lot of reassurances, I think she feels less anxious about us going to China and realizes that we don't expect her to know Chinese perfectly by then. Since we talked about it the bad dreams are going away.